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“Yes. Of course,” said Hector, blushing slightly for the white lie. “What about it?”

“The governor of the western marches is spreading the news that thou art not the man meant in the prophecy, that thou art an impostor, that the other, the Englishman whom Mr. Preserved Higgins brought with him, is the real Al Nakia, the real 'Expected One,' and …”

“Then Mr. Preserved Higgins knows of the prophecy?” sharply demanded Hector.

“Yes. He knows, it through his agent, the Babu Bansi.”

Hector was about to accept the explanation, when, suddenly, looking up and seeing the expression of sardonic amusement that flitted over Koom Khan's vulpine features, he remembered that this was Tamerlanistan, the heart of the Moslem Orient, and that the Moslems, as a religious body, have that strange characteristic which the Chinese have racially; namely, an unwritten, uncodified, but absolutely compelling freemasonry which makes it possible that a secret known to all the Moslems of the community, from the highest dignitary of the mosque olema to the lowest, raggedest donkey boy, from the head of the Rakaiz Al-Utab, the “Merchants' Guild,” to a recently and forcefully converted plum-colored Nubian slave, that a secret which is whispered in the coffee-houses, the opium shops, the palace yards, the camel markets, the caravanserais, and behind the flopping curtains of the harem, remains a sealed book to the non-Moslem members of the community. He knew that it was this peculiar characteristic which, next to the centripetal